Now tying this all back to where I began two posts ago, illegal immigration, allowing people into this country to take the jobs that Americans don’t want. The CIA world fact book states that in 2006, 4.8% of Americans were unemployed and numbers from 2004 state that 12% of the population was below the poverty line (both numbers were the most recent ones offered). With automation being the way of the future for this country just as animals and simple machines replaced human labor in the time of our ancestors those numbers have no where to go but up. While this country should continue to allow legal immigrants it should make strict standards for who is allowed such as educated people and those in a sustainable financial situation. As more Americans are willing to take any job they can get before turning to the option of emigration in search of new work the jobs that are currently held by illegal immigrants will become in demand for legal residents.
My solution to the illegal immigration problem is simple require all companies to file a request for employment application with the federal government when ever they hire new workers. If the records of an employee do not check out they are black listed and their employment terminated. Any company that hires or maintains employment of a black listed person or does not file the proper paper work is hit with a massive fine. The government wouldn’t even have to worry about the cost of deporting these people. By taking away all possible avenues of employment they will be forced to leave because they will not be able to afford the cost of living here. Eventually the word of mouth about there being no jobs in America will get around and people will stop coming.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Social Aspects to my Theory of Emigration
For those of you who just read my previous post and are thinking to your selves “That is a horrible idea, why isn’t he thinking about all the people who will loose their jobs and be forced to move to other parts of the world. What an uncompassionate asshole!” well I have some news; it is the best viable option for the continued economic success of this country. The options are simple when it comes to production based companies in this country.
1. Do nothing, allow rising labor costs and union demands such as for heath care for a huge labor force to cause your product’s price to rise to the point at which it is no longer affordable to its target audience and your company can no longer generate income and you go out of business sinking not just your self but your suppliers and distributors leaving a gaping hole in the American economy.
2. Outsource, while this option does not cause the executives of a company to loose their jobs most of the lower level employees do as well as those working for suppliers and distributors. Even though the company is in business however because the product is now an import the price will still be unreasonably high for Americans
3. My plan for automation, the lower level employees are still lost as in the case of outsourcing however a small number of educated employees are newly hired to run and maintain the automated machinery. The company still expands its operations to other countries which increases revenue as well as corporate office staff based in the US to handle all of the managerial responsibilities for the new operations. However even though the overseas operations continue the product that is distributed in America is still made here and is cheaper than before allowing people to continue purchasing it. The suppliers and distributors in the US are kept in business as well because the company is still producing.
In the end out of the three possible outcomes for an American production company my plan is the one in which American job losses are kept to a minimum and as opposed to damaging the US economy that plan actually bolsters it. As for the workers that lost their jobs they are free to move to the new plants built overseas at which the company would hire them due to their experience. While they would be making less the cost of living would also be less.
A practical application of this is let’s say you have 50,000 workers in a Detroit auto plant, your business is terrible and your company will go under unless changes are made. Your company also consists of 750 line managers and 750 office personnel as well as 500 members of management. The Detroit plant is responsible for North American, Central America, The Caribbean, and South America. To solve the problem you build 4 small automated plants around the US and Canada as well as 3 medium sized manual labor plants in South and Central America. For the 4 automated plants you hire 200 tech personnel to operate the systems. You also hire 20,000 people to work at the 3 new manual labor plants for the same amount it would have cost you to employ 10,000 people at the old one. To manage the 20,000 employees you retain 300 line managers. Due to the new operations you also take on another 250 office personnel and another 50 members of management.
What you have just done is maintained production, decreased costs significantly, and increased the average education and pay level of your employees in the United States.
1. Do nothing, allow rising labor costs and union demands such as for heath care for a huge labor force to cause your product’s price to rise to the point at which it is no longer affordable to its target audience and your company can no longer generate income and you go out of business sinking not just your self but your suppliers and distributors leaving a gaping hole in the American economy.
2. Outsource, while this option does not cause the executives of a company to loose their jobs most of the lower level employees do as well as those working for suppliers and distributors. Even though the company is in business however because the product is now an import the price will still be unreasonably high for Americans
3. My plan for automation, the lower level employees are still lost as in the case of outsourcing however a small number of educated employees are newly hired to run and maintain the automated machinery. The company still expands its operations to other countries which increases revenue as well as corporate office staff based in the US to handle all of the managerial responsibilities for the new operations. However even though the overseas operations continue the product that is distributed in America is still made here and is cheaper than before allowing people to continue purchasing it. The suppliers and distributors in the US are kept in business as well because the company is still producing.
In the end out of the three possible outcomes for an American production company my plan is the one in which American job losses are kept to a minimum and as opposed to damaging the US economy that plan actually bolsters it. As for the workers that lost their jobs they are free to move to the new plants built overseas at which the company would hire them due to their experience. While they would be making less the cost of living would also be less.
A practical application of this is let’s say you have 50,000 workers in a Detroit auto plant, your business is terrible and your company will go under unless changes are made. Your company also consists of 750 line managers and 750 office personnel as well as 500 members of management. The Detroit plant is responsible for North American, Central America, The Caribbean, and South America. To solve the problem you build 4 small automated plants around the US and Canada as well as 3 medium sized manual labor plants in South and Central America. For the 4 automated plants you hire 200 tech personnel to operate the systems. You also hire 20,000 people to work at the 3 new manual labor plants for the same amount it would have cost you to employ 10,000 people at the old one. To manage the 20,000 employees you retain 300 line managers. Due to the new operations you also take on another 250 office personnel and another 50 members of management.
What you have just done is maintained production, decreased costs significantly, and increased the average education and pay level of your employees in the United States.
An Overview on my Theory of Emigration
Recently there has been a lot of talk about illegal immigration and I want to throw out a theory I have. Again this is just a theory and if you can find problems with it leave a comment and let me know because this is something I have been thinking about for a while and I would like to refine it if need be. I call this my theory of emigration as the title of this article so aptly says. The premise of this theory is that over time the completion of tasks becomes more efficient.
Take for instance farming; you have a patch of land that produces say 1,000 pounds of grain every year and there are 100 people working there. After a while you discover irrigation and begin using simple machines to do it. You can now produce 1,500 pounds of grain and only need 80 people to do it now that you no longer have need to haul buckets of water every where. Next you domesticate animals and construct basic farming equipment and now you’re down to 50 people and still producing 1,500 pounds of grain. Next comes selective breeding and crop rotation and now you are producing 2,500 pounds of grain each year with you 50 people. Industrial revolution comes along and now you have a machine that separates the grain from the useless stuff and you no longer need 10 of your people. Then a planting machine, bam 15 more gone, fertilizer and machines to spread it come along and you can now grow 3,000 pounds with only 25 people. Then along comes harvesting machines and your down to 5 people who just drive machines all day. Eventually all of your machines become automated and you now have 1 guy who sets up a program and updates it when need be and he alone is responsible for producing the 3,000 pounds of grain that at one point would have taken 300 people to produce.
This process doesn’t just affect manual labor jobs either, just 50 years ago many offices had people to crunch accounting numbers or draw design blue prints and all of those jobs were replaced by calculators and computers. For those of you who read my post “Questions of Constitutionality” on 09/22/2007 you may know where this is going. In that article I put out the idea that the best thing for American companies to do if they want to stay in business would be to automate plants in the US and have those plants provide goods to the US, and at the same time build plants with manual labor in other countries to provide to those countries.
At this point I would like to refine this idea by suggesting that companies build smaller automated plants in first world counties and larger manual labor plants in 3rd world countries. Each of the plants would provide for production in that part of the world and distribution / exports from any particular plant would be restricted by necessity to nearby area’s and countries. At the larger manual plants the workers are paid reasonable wages by those countries’ standards, when the cost of labor gets to the point of being inefficient when compared to automated standards the plant is then replaced with automated plants.
The concept of this plan is that people would emigrate from 1st world countries to 3rd world countries in search of jobs. This would be a reverse of what we have now and the way I view it is that the demand for educated people (College degree of some sort) in 1st world countries would go up and the demand for uneducated people would go significantly down. In 3rd world countries however the demand for uneducated people would go up. Slowly but surely 3rd world countries will become 1st world countries and the bulk of the human population will continue to move to new developing nations. By the time the whole world is completely covered in developed countries and there is no need for uneducated workers anywhere on this planet hopefully we will be colonizing other ones.
While such a suggestion may seem like science fiction it has been almost 40 years since we have been to the moon and the technological breakthroughs since then have been astronomical, lunar research stations followed by colonies are not only plausible but imperative as we continue to use up this planet’s resources with the ever growing human population.
Take for instance farming; you have a patch of land that produces say 1,000 pounds of grain every year and there are 100 people working there. After a while you discover irrigation and begin using simple machines to do it. You can now produce 1,500 pounds of grain and only need 80 people to do it now that you no longer have need to haul buckets of water every where. Next you domesticate animals and construct basic farming equipment and now you’re down to 50 people and still producing 1,500 pounds of grain. Next comes selective breeding and crop rotation and now you are producing 2,500 pounds of grain each year with you 50 people. Industrial revolution comes along and now you have a machine that separates the grain from the useless stuff and you no longer need 10 of your people. Then a planting machine, bam 15 more gone, fertilizer and machines to spread it come along and you can now grow 3,000 pounds with only 25 people. Then along comes harvesting machines and your down to 5 people who just drive machines all day. Eventually all of your machines become automated and you now have 1 guy who sets up a program and updates it when need be and he alone is responsible for producing the 3,000 pounds of grain that at one point would have taken 300 people to produce.
This process doesn’t just affect manual labor jobs either, just 50 years ago many offices had people to crunch accounting numbers or draw design blue prints and all of those jobs were replaced by calculators and computers. For those of you who read my post “Questions of Constitutionality” on 09/22/2007 you may know where this is going. In that article I put out the idea that the best thing for American companies to do if they want to stay in business would be to automate plants in the US and have those plants provide goods to the US, and at the same time build plants with manual labor in other countries to provide to those countries.
At this point I would like to refine this idea by suggesting that companies build smaller automated plants in first world counties and larger manual labor plants in 3rd world countries. Each of the plants would provide for production in that part of the world and distribution / exports from any particular plant would be restricted by necessity to nearby area’s and countries. At the larger manual plants the workers are paid reasonable wages by those countries’ standards, when the cost of labor gets to the point of being inefficient when compared to automated standards the plant is then replaced with automated plants.
The concept of this plan is that people would emigrate from 1st world countries to 3rd world countries in search of jobs. This would be a reverse of what we have now and the way I view it is that the demand for educated people (College degree of some sort) in 1st world countries would go up and the demand for uneducated people would go significantly down. In 3rd world countries however the demand for uneducated people would go up. Slowly but surely 3rd world countries will become 1st world countries and the bulk of the human population will continue to move to new developing nations. By the time the whole world is completely covered in developed countries and there is no need for uneducated workers anywhere on this planet hopefully we will be colonizing other ones.
While such a suggestion may seem like science fiction it has been almost 40 years since we have been to the moon and the technological breakthroughs since then have been astronomical, lunar research stations followed by colonies are not only plausible but imperative as we continue to use up this planet’s resources with the ever growing human population.
The Land of Immigration
At one of our country's largest ports stands a mighty collosus that holds an inscription containing the passage "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" I am of course refering to the Statue of Liberty. So if our country is supposed to accept the poor and tired who want to be free, why does it cost so much to become a citizen?
Have you ever wondered why there are so many illegal immigrants? No, no, not why they come over, but why are they illegal? Are they just too lazy to go through the process of becoming a citizen? No, that isn't exactly the case. The act of becoming a legal citizen is wired with red tape and expensive tasks. One has to pay legal fees by hiring a lawyer, take a difficult test containing random U.S. History questions that the majority of legal citizens couldn't even answer, and all of this is assuming you even got sponsored by someone inside the country to begin with. How do the people who don't know any Americans get sponsored? How do the poor, honest immigrants who can't even afford to even become legal immgrants with a green card pay for the legal fees involved? They usually can't, but they still want into the Land of the Free, so they do it the only way they can, illegally.
I'm not saying we should let anyone become a citizen and have no restrictions on immigration; we don't want anymore serial killers inside our country, we make enough of our own. However, I am saying that we should make ways for honest yet financially handicapped people to get in, such as free temporary status, like a green card, that can be obtained by anyone that comes over and is willing to work. Some kind of pay-as-you-go type of citizenship, like an indentured servant almost, but without the servant part. That way we really can live up to the Statue of Liberty and welcome anyone, regardless of wealth, into our great country.
Update: Here are the steps required to receive a green card. A relative or employer of the immigrant must submit papers to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. This takes a few months usually and costs around 200$. Next the papers must be processed and additional documents and a passport usually need to be obtained as well. This takes a few more months and around 500$ is needed for processing fees. If the immigrant is a direct relative to the sponsor, then no visa number is required and the case goes straight to the U. S. embassy in their country. After some blood tests and medical checks that cost another 200$, the person can enter the United States. However, if the immigrant isn't a direct relative, they must wait for an Immigrant Visa number to become available before they go to the medical check stage, which takes anywhere from a few months to a few years. The whole process costs around 1000$ and takes at least 5-6 months.
Considering the fact that many of the current illegal immigrants were in a stage of poverty before coming here, it isn't hard to understand why they can't cough up a thousand dollars and wait half a year or more. In case you are wondering where I got this info, I received much of it first hand from a legal immigrant who lives in my suite. Also, this website sums it all up nicely if you are interested in learning more.
Have you ever wondered why there are so many illegal immigrants? No, no, not why they come over, but why are they illegal? Are they just too lazy to go through the process of becoming a citizen? No, that isn't exactly the case. The act of becoming a legal citizen is wired with red tape and expensive tasks. One has to pay legal fees by hiring a lawyer, take a difficult test containing random U.S. History questions that the majority of legal citizens couldn't even answer, and all of this is assuming you even got sponsored by someone inside the country to begin with. How do the people who don't know any Americans get sponsored? How do the poor, honest immigrants who can't even afford to even become legal immgrants with a green card pay for the legal fees involved? They usually can't, but they still want into the Land of the Free, so they do it the only way they can, illegally.
I'm not saying we should let anyone become a citizen and have no restrictions on immigration; we don't want anymore serial killers inside our country, we make enough of our own. However, I am saying that we should make ways for honest yet financially handicapped people to get in, such as free temporary status, like a green card, that can be obtained by anyone that comes over and is willing to work. Some kind of pay-as-you-go type of citizenship, like an indentured servant almost, but without the servant part. That way we really can live up to the Statue of Liberty and welcome anyone, regardless of wealth, into our great country.
Update: Here are the steps required to receive a green card. A relative or employer of the immigrant must submit papers to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. This takes a few months usually and costs around 200$. Next the papers must be processed and additional documents and a passport usually need to be obtained as well. This takes a few more months and around 500$ is needed for processing fees. If the immigrant is a direct relative to the sponsor, then no visa number is required and the case goes straight to the U. S. embassy in their country. After some blood tests and medical checks that cost another 200$, the person can enter the United States. However, if the immigrant isn't a direct relative, they must wait for an Immigrant Visa number to become available before they go to the medical check stage, which takes anywhere from a few months to a few years. The whole process costs around 1000$ and takes at least 5-6 months.
Considering the fact that many of the current illegal immigrants were in a stage of poverty before coming here, it isn't hard to understand why they can't cough up a thousand dollars and wait half a year or more. In case you are wondering where I got this info, I received much of it first hand from a legal immigrant who lives in my suite. Also, this website sums it all up nicely if you are interested in learning more.
CandiedYams: Fence on the Border Definitely a Terrible Idea
While I don't always see eye-to-eye with Mrs. Nancy Pelosi, when it comes to the topic of the Mexico-America fence I completely agree with her. I'm on the fence, pun totally intended, when it comes to illegal immigration and whether we should grant them citizenship or kick them out, but I'll save that for my next post. For this post, let me bring to light some reasons as to why building a fence over the 2000-mile border is just plain silly. I use data from a post on Washingtonpost.com very liberally here, as well as some info from wikipedia at this page. The post can be found here.
- Its 2000 miles long.
And we're not talking about a nice long stretch of flat grassland here. The fence would go through Mexican and American cities, mountains, deserts, rivers, and even irrigation canals. In the plan's defense, it only mandates a fence along 700 miles. Keeping in mind that the plans involve 15 foot high fences, sometimes of double or triple thickness, one can imagine how much this would cost.
- It is going to cost somewhere along 2 billion dollars.
And that's just to build it. Anyone who owns a fence knows that it is very difficult to keep it in good condition. Weather animals really like to destroy fences, and when your fence is measured in the hundreds of miles, you are talking about a constant state of needing repair.
- It breaks laws.
Technically it doesn't break laws because of the 2005 Real ID Act which states, "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive all legal requirements such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section." So basically, the Secretary of Homeland Security can ignore any law he wants to build this thing, and no one has any discretion over breaking these laws except him. So much for checks and balances, a concept this country was built on. Laws that the proposed plan breaks include; the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act. And all of those were broken just in the construction of a small stretch of fence just outside of San Diego in '05.
- It won't work.
Anyone who has watched espionage or action movies can tell you just how easy it is to get past a fence that has no guards. Considering the length of the fence, the majority of it will be unmanned, which means anyone with a ladder and maybe a leather coat can climb any fence with barbed wire at the top. A fence built at the border of San Diego in the 1990's was built to stop immigrants. This didn't stop immigrants from coming; it just made them try to get in somewhere else, like through the desert. To counter this, more border patrol units were sent to the surrounding area, which ironically left the fence itself vulnerable to penetration. What follows is a quote straight form the Washington Post.
"Tucson now has 2,600 agents. San Diego has lost 1,000 agents. Guess where the traffic is going? Back to San Diego." said T.J. Bonner, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, the main union for Border Patrol agents. "San Diego is the most heavily fortified border in the entire country, and yet it's not stopping people from coming across."
All these topics are just the tip of the iceberg. The ones I've discussed just happen to the most glaring issues, in my opinion at least. Hopefully this brings the idea of a fence into a different light, and stops anyone from thinking that Pelosi's lack of support for the fence is because of a lack of support for national security.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Pelosi: Fence on the Border a Terrible Idea
When asked about the fence being built along the United States-Mexico border, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls it a "terrible idea." She is referring to the Secure Fence Act, which President Bush signed into law ordering the construction of about 370 miles of fence and 200 miles of vehicle barriers, including concrete barriers, by the end of 2008. She stated, "I have been against the fence, I thought it's a bad idea even when it was just a matter of discussion." My translation: "I am against national security, and have been against it from the beginning, even after 9/11." How can one be so hungry for Hispanic votes to overlook such an important issue as protecting our borders? And an even better question: How did someone who apparently doesn't care about the security of our country get to be second in line for the presidency?The construction of the fence is necessary for several reasons. One, as I mentioned previously, is national security. We need to know who is in this country, and why, at all times. Also, we currently have between 12 and 20 million illegal immigrants who are unaccounted for in this country, and if they commit a crime while they are here, we have no formal record of them to track them down. And finally, each illegal immigrant that comes into the country makes it a little harder for other immigrants to enter the country legally. I am not anti-immigrant at all. Having people from several different cultures is what this country was built on. But this country also has laws, and they must be followed, and cannot be followed until we close off the border and account for those illegal immigrants already in the country.
Speaker Pelosi also mentioned her support for the DREAM Act, a piece of legislation that makes it easier for illegal immigrants to receive financial aid for college. "It just isn't fair," she said. "Those young people who came to America one way or another ... their opportunities are curtailed because of the situation. And it's not only harmful to them, it's harmful to the country." Again, I have to disagree. As a college student, it outrages me that government officials are trying to take away some of my financial aid dollars to give to people who aren't even supposed to be in the country. Also, the Democrats' argument for allowing the illegal immigrants to stay in the country is that they take job that are undesirable for Americans to fill. Well, those jobs don't require a college degree. Clearly, Speaker Pelosi arguments are starting to conflict each other, and I cannot wait to get a leader for Congress that has their head on straight and will get this country back to moving in the right direction.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Breaking Up is Hard to Do
Ice cream and cookie dough might soon be in order for the people of Belgium. The country of over 10 million consists of two nationalities that cannot stand each other. In the north lies Flanders where Dutch (aka Flemish) is spoken and money is increasingly made. In the south lies Wallonia where French is spoken and the depressing landscape is covered with old factories. It is primarily because of these differences that both sides, specifically northern Flanders, are pushing for a national divorce of sorts.
More than three months after a national election the country has failed to elect a new government, stable or otherwise. This has caused numerous predictions that the country will soon cease to exist. Filip Dewinter, leader of the extreme right Flemish Bloc, was quoted by the New York Times claiming, "We are two different nations, an artificial state created as a buffer between big powers, and we have nothing in common except a king, chocolate and beer." It is the radical Flemish extremists like Dewinter who are pushing for the division of this flat country of just over 10 million people who just cannot seem to coexist. The proposed split would be to divide the country horizontally down the middle along the ethnic and economic barriers. This is partly due to the resentment about the econimic circumstances of the south. There the unemployment rate is double that of the north, causing Flanders to have to financially support Wallonia. However, the French-speakers of the nation support the status quo.
While it may seem like a fairly cut and dry issue, there are many possible consequences of the perceived breakup. For instance, the French speaking capitol of Brussels was traditionally a Flemish speaking city. In the occurrence of a split Brussels would become the capitol of Flanders, much to the outrage of the French-speaking citizens. It would also have possibly severe international consequences. Brussels is the home to both the European Union and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). The theoretical effects on these organizations are still unknown, but it could encourage other separatist movements, namely those of the Basques and Catalans, among others.
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